I try to say a lot while saying very little. Get used to it.
Posts tagged techie
notes: buzzing around
Feb 17th
Posted by SEV in staying.interested
Google’s latest experiment – Buzz – has been launched to the world recently, with varying degrees of appreciation, hate, irritation and all the reactions that every new social idea is greeted with. Personally, it is a social media outlet/inlet that I can get on board with – seeing as how it integrates nicely into my existing Gmail/Google experience. It has its caveats though.. features/glitches/annoyances that I wish they had ironed out before getting it out the door:
- Google Reader posts can be easily imported to Buzz – and comments on Buzz are back-ported to Reader. However, liking and reading of Reader imports in Buzz are not back-ported into Reader. Irritating in some cases, when there’s nothing much to see. Good in other cases, as I may miss something/want to re-buzz something.
- Privacy settings from Reader are correctly applied for such posts (unsurprising, as the dashboard for Reader privacy is still through Reader) – so if I can’t comment on your shared item in Reader, I can’t in Buzz either. However, the status of those settings is not correctly shown in Buzz. Everything imported from Reader appears as ‘Public’, when in reality, only the item is public – the discussion ability is anything but for the ‘Public’.
- Google seems confused as to what they want to make Buzz. A single life-stream source that you check for all your social updates? Or just another interface to their social services – to popularize them more? I would have thought the former.
- Setting privacy settings in a particular way is not easy. Needs a lot of thought, as each Google service still makes use of its own privacy settings. For example, I didn’t want to see a particular person’s Reader shared items in Buzz. Unfollowing them has a global effect – I unfollow them on Reader too in the process. I ended up unfollowing them and adding the RSS feed of their shared items in Reader separately. Crude, but effective. Similar ideas have been suggested for re-buzzing.
- A cool idea is posting via email to Buzz, but the functionality is more of a status update than a post — more like short updates posted to Twitter. The power of length offered by Buzz is not exploited as the body text is ignored for such a Buzz update. Sad really, as would have been such a simple yet refreshing re-buzz idea.
- ‘@’ replies are nigh-impossible when you do not know the person’s Gmail ID that is associated with the Google profile.
- Muting is golden.
Feature requests I have galore: lists/groups support, ordering/collapsing messages, re-buzzing, additional import options into Buzz, selective streaming for my Buzz feed etc etc.
I’ve discovered whole hosts of new people (who have also discovered me) and have already had some interesting conversations using it. Most privacy complaints and issues I’ve read with are minor or non-existent: I firmly see BIG things in Buzz’s future.
If only it would get here faster.
(to be added to if I think of more)
Update (26 Feb 2010): Via Reader found a series of comments I had missed on a Reader-Buzz export. Searching through my Buzzes in Gmail showed me I muted this post. However, opening it up there does not show me any comments on it at ALL. According to this post muting a Buzz apparently mutes me from ALL future comments on that post in Buzz, to the extent that the related Buzz in my Gmail does not show the new comments after I muted it i.e. muting completely silences the Buzz conversation for me from that point on. Even if I’m ‘@’ mentioned in it. Need to use it more sparingly.
notes: what should be the real plan for the chrome os?
Nov 21st
Posted by SEV in staying.interested
The world has been talking about the Google Chrome OS. We have people saying ‘next big huge thing‘, and obviously, ‘next big huge steaming pile of crap‘.
Me, personally? I haven’t, and still don’t like the idea of Google having a browser on the market – it reeks too much of a company trying to ensure that they take over every part of the Internet (their proposing SPDY, which will best work in Chrome does not help matters). There have been a series of posts recently dealing with different facets of this particular takeover: the oncoming war, google’s war-winning strategy (+counter-point). The Chrome OS spells the onset of Google really taking the war to the big guys – M$, Apple, – and trying to ensure they have control at the level of OS.
Can it really succeed?
Dicey. Google has shown that even a relatively small move like releasing their own GPS (GPS software is just one step away from hardware, given phones today) really stuck it to the competition, as innumerable charts of stock prices have shown. On the flip side, that is a very specific market. Besides how much can an OS that is specific to one particular hardware set, has no storage except on the cloud, and no real UI really do? I do believe in cloud computing in a big way. As a backup. I doubt users really trust the cloud today. Even the generation that is growing up with Gmail and Google Docs being a reality from Day One (as opposed to us/me, the generation that saw the Internet take off 
), still does not live online. There is an offline component because the world is not online 24×7. Though the proliferation of smart-phones is changing that drastically, the world cannot do everything online just yet. I don’t think that can happen for a long long time to come. We still need our computers/laptops/notebooks – the thin client is a loooong way away - and in that sense, Google’s OS is doomed to failure in today’s world, even though it is visionary in heralding a pure cloud-based era.
), still does not live online. There is an offline component because the world is not online 24×7. Though the proliferation of smart-phones is changing that drastically, the world cannot do everything online just yet. I don’t think that can happen for a long long time to come. We still need our computers/laptops/notebooks – the thin client is a loooong way away - and in that sense, Google’s OS is doomed to failure in today’s world, even though it is visionary in heralding a pure cloud-based era.
What can the Chrome OS really achieve then? As Scoble pointed out, there is the “dumb device” market that need not do much more than access recipes (even if his estimate of $1000 is a bit off as a good price). Which can also be occupied by E-Readers like the Kindle, Nook and what have you. The Nook runs Android, meaning Chrome OS will then fight a losing battle against another Google product (anyone else smell monopoly?). Android is far far more extensible than Chrome can ever be, so that battle is lost before it begins.
There is one other market that struck me today as being perfect for the Chrome OS. The flash-based quickstart (or the pre-boot) OS. We have such things existing today in every single laptop, where at the press of a button you have a media center/web browser accessible within 7-10 seconds. As opposed to resume/start-up times of >30 seconds fore Windows 7 and Mac OS X [cat's name]. Its a tiny tiny margin that people don’t really care about – and so we don’t bother ever pressing that button. 2 reasons. OS media centers along with OS functionality is something people don’t mind waiting for – rather than have quick access to something crippled. Plus whatever browser/media player they offer is way way below par of anything usable. (Seriously. Have you tried any of them?).
What are the Chrome OS specs? Start-up time of 7-10 seconds. Browser available with Internet connectivity at the end of that. Easy access to Gmail, Docs, Lala, Hulu – essentially all the web apps. Basic media player functionality probably there in some manner (web-based or actual app unknown). No storage. Every single one of which fulfills all the requirements of a pre-boot OS. If we really are to hit that quickstart button on a laptop, most of us want to do one of 2 things properly: (1) quick access to personal e-mail, (2) media playback. Yes, in that order. Work cannot be something I do in a pre-boot. Chrome is a pretty decent browser, steadily gaining in features and speed (while ballooning in memory – just like Fx used to be). Infinitely better than the trash in pre-boots. And there are enough open-source media players out there to integrate into Chrome OS too. It all comes together perfectly.
Give up on the damn specific notebooks specifically pre-configured for Chrome OS and nothing else, Google. You have tie-ups with Dell, HP, Acer and so on to pre-install Chrome, Google Desktop etcetera. Tie-up for the pre-boot as well. Will users press that button? You have the hype already, work on that. There are definitely some curiosity presses of the quickstart button that will happen. It is near impossible to make an actual OS start up in the time-frame you are pushing for. Too many things to load up. There lies the killer move of this strategy: do NOT make Chrome able to do every single tiny thing. Read USB, Internet access, media. Thassit. That’s the basic stuff that you want people to use you for. Nothing more. You’re never going to be able to replace M$ or Apple. Ever. Plus you’re fighting with them on every other front anyway. But you can undercut them perfectly. And it’s a market they are not going to touch for a long time to come. Think of it this way: even if people use Chrome OS once or twice a week, that’s still a level of access that you don’t have today.
But is that enough?
Update: As Raghu pointed out below, there is a chance that the Chrome OS will merge with Android, in which case above strategy might still help them get a foothold in a market that they have no standing in. Additionally, a very in-depth look at the Chrome OS by Thurrott, a guy who is a big proponent of the cloud, and is actually already using it via Amazon.
personas-ization
Nov 5th
Posted by SEV in staying.general
Somehow Personas is making me regress. Back to a time when I first started using Firebird 0.7, and hacked my way into theming it (the Firefox of those days did not look pretty – it looked like what it was: a quick, nifty version of the Mozilla Suite Browser). And then with Firefox 0.9, official themes could be easier downloaded from the official Firefox site. My only irritation being that you could not easily preview them. Or use them (restarting was required, as far as I remember).
Worst of all, such themes would screw up in some tiny detail.. given that by this time Firefox was a permanently opened application in my Windows – the tiny detail would eventually grow to a huge gigantic flaw. One I just could not miss. It might be just the lack of theming the edge of a particular menu. But that was enough. Yeah, I know. Big huge non-existent problem.
And so, I quit theming. Indeed I scorned the idea. Who would do something like that? I even quit theming my Thunderbird. They seemed mere frivolous activities, for someone who did not appreciate the true utilitarian look of the browser. Eventually my entire computer would be regressed to its bare-bones look, grey and blue windows and all. As simple as you can get. Stark. Snappy.
Dull?
With UberT, theming developed into a challenge. How far down can you tweak XP to look like another OS? Longhorn (now Vista) previews were coming out, and just as quickly being made into themes. Flyakite OS X for the pure Mac experience. Indeed, I remember at the WWW2006 conference everyone was puzzled how my “Mac” was behaving like an XP. My Firefox? Got a Safari theme. But I remember my constant search to improve its look – none of the ones available were just quite good enough.
Yeah, I know. Continuing big huge non-existent problem.
Since I moved to Vista, though, such endeavors have ceased. Some amount of basic customization seemed enough. Wallpapers, task-bar/window color (always black!), transparency. It appeared as though Windows had evolved perfectly in this one aspect to fulfill our need for customization. Meanwhile Gmail added themes, as did iGoogle and so on and forth.
And Firefox remained in its default form. No more big huge non-existent problem! Even if UberT saw one and insisted that Glasser was the greatest thing for Firefox and Aero ever.
Now we’re at Windows 7. Themes are more neat than ever before. Nifty and pretty. One-click install into Windows from the site. Yes, yes, my Firefox remained its usual default self. Until now.
I had heard of Personas (during the Fx 3 release) but had never really paid any attention to it. Until I installed Fx 3.6 Beta. Personas built-in. Which I discovered by accident while reading the release notes.
The simplicity boggles the mind. Go to site. Hover to preview. Click to install. No restart. On-the-fly theme switching. And it styles nothing more than the window itself. I’m not irritated that the developer didn’t get the menu color quite right.
Unfuckingbelievable.
Now that I read this post in retrospect, it seems like the silliest thing to post about.
But remember Rule #32 from Zombieland: Enjoy the little things.
So here I am.
windows 7 – quirks, quips and quarks
Oct 20th
Posted by SEV in staying.thoughts
So I finally moved to Windows 7 on one of the machines I use regularly. It wasn’t without its share of weird-ass issues – I don’t think any M$ OS can be without its quirks. Not issues/problems, mind you. Quirks. I will try to update this based on what else I figure out in the future as well. I’m not attempting a detailed critique of what its like, there are ton-loads of such reviews online (most comprehensively, here). I’m merely noting stuff that stood out to me, personally. I’ll try not to degenerate to ranting or raving about anything.
- It started out with problems in just trying to upgrade the damn OS. I have Vista x64 installed – I should be able to upgrade it to Windows 7 x64 directly. After a whole lot of confusion about the disc image available from the university, I finally managed to get one that works. Pop-in, click-through basic blah-blah, wait for 5 minutes while it does some kind of analysis… and ping! Error message. Random unknown error that I saw a lot of online. Never got round to solving it though.
Why? ‘Coz I then restarted. Big mistake.
‘Bootmgr missing’.
Eventually, some searching later, I found a solution on the Windows 7 forums online. This problem apparently happens very randomly, and is generally not fixable. I got lucky – the solution+’Startup Repair’ on the install disc seemed to do the trip. An inauspicious beginning? - Eventually, I ended up installing a fresh Windows 7 on a separate partition. Zip-zap-zoom, like so many others it only took about 20-30 minutes to have a fully functional Windows installed. Took me a few more hours to actually have it all set up the way I want it, but what the hell. Very zippy, very snappy, very intuitive. Polished. I remember feeling parts of Vista were just brought forward from XP. Not so here. Everything has been shined up just a little bit. The drivers box from Win95 ‘Plug-n-Play’ is still there though. Hard to improve perfection
- After struggling to auto-login to my network share on Windows since XP, I finally have a solution. Til date, the only way to do this was the make the user-name/password for Windows as well as the network share the same. Suboptimal by any standards. The ‘Vault‘ feature in Win7 lets me save a user-name/password for any network drive, or even some random network computer I want to access. Login to Windows -> auto-login to network drive via ‘Vault’ permanent credential. Its not a full-fledged credential manager like Keychain (OS X), which can get confusing. Still pretty cool that there finally is a secure solution to my problem.
- Windows 7 has mucked around with UAC, for god knows what reason. I’ve used Vista for 2-odd years now and personally thought UAC was one of the best ways of ensuring some modicum of security in the mess that is Win-32 (note that Win-64, due to a radical redesign, does not have such problems). I reset it to ‘high’ – which, contrary to what random techblogs say, did not cause me any major hassles at all. Hell, UAC prompted me when Adobe seamlessly tried to install Flash player with nary a prompt when I visited some random page in IE8. Think about just how scary that is if you have your alerts on low – and you won’t know when software is sneakily installed on your computer. Win7 default settings? You’re probably not getting prompted about such installs.
However, all this UAC mucking around means that MiKTeX/TeXnicCenter (for LaTeX) doesn’t work perfectly. Sometimes MiKTeX packages need to be installed on-the-fly as you compile the document. In Vista, during a similar situation, UAC prompted me properly and installed everything beautifully. Apparently something broke (or maybe UAC works differently in Win7), but for all my trying I could not get on-the-fly installs to work in TeXnicCenter+Win7. I had to use some random editor to get the package installed, after which everything has been fine. But something seems amiss there. Whenever I do my next such install of Win7, maybe I’ll know more. - Windows Media Player 12 rocks. Codec support out-of-the-box is astounding to say the least. Interface is sweet too. Minimalistic by default (which is always cool), and elegant when expanded. Did I mention snappy? That drudgy mess called iTunes is shown up for the.. well.. drudgy cludgy mess that it is.
- Libraries and Win7. The start of the elusive WinFS. The idea is smart. Aggregate content from multiple folders into a single view (library). Folders can exist on multiple drives. But not just anywhere. You can’t add folders to a library which are located on a network drive. If you want to add them, according to Windows Help, you have to make the network folder available offline, so that they can be indexed. Also known as maintaining a copy of the folder on your local computer. Which is automagically synced at various times with the network share.
Yes, you read it right. M$ wants you to save whatever network folder on your local computer if you want to add it to a library. The only way to ensure that Windows can monitor it correctly.
However, that said, hidden inside WMP > Organize > Libraries, is a dialog box that looks exactly like the ‘Add folders to library dialog box’ from Explorer, but lets you add any damn folder to the library! And folders thus added are easily indexed by WMP. Explorer remains pissy and won’t show you meta-data info for such files/folders, going far as to say that all Library features are not supported for “some included folders” (i.e. my network locations). You’d think that if WMP can index it, Explorer can display the meta-data too… but it doesn’t work that way. However I have a single navigable interface in in my Library for folders on any drive connected to my computer (network and non-network), and thats all that matters I guess. This mainly applies to music and videos.
[In my graphic is the error you get if you add network folders via Explorer on the left, and the successful result of adding network folders via WMP on the right.] - Update: Default power settings are to put the computer to sleep in 20 minutes and switch off hard drives in 10. Why? Aggressive eco-friendliness? You’d think they would ask you about such things, or at least set acceptable defaults. WTF is 10 minutes of idling? Resuming from sleep is instantaneous though. Unlike Vista which would lag just a little bit.
Maybe more. Maybe soon. Don’t hold your breath.
notes: is the zune HD not awesome at all?
Sep 28th
Posted by SEV in staying.interested
[opinion due to : Betanews - Zune HD: The best portable media player you may never buy ]
Like many other reviews have done before him, the author demonstrates real love for the Zune HD. He also stresses limitations – both artificial and real – which apparently translate to it being the device that nobody will ever find utility for. This is a tack that a lot of people have taken when it comes to this device. I completely disagree.
The usual comparison is to the iPod Touch – which I think the HD was never a competitor for. The Touch focuses on gaming, apps, browsing – basically every single thing other than portable media playback. Speaking of which, most reviews are not terribly positive of the Touch’s media capabilities anyway. So if a player is launched with none of the above features, but with brilliant media capabilities – does it really become useless? So I can’t browse YT, I can’t perfectly sync my XBox with my HD, I can’t play a million-plus games. But wait, how far away are getting such features really? Mere firmware updates? Mere downloads? More importantly: are they really necessary for a PMP to be good at what it does? How often am I going to check email/sites on a PMP (which has only WiFi access – just like the Touch)? It is a misconception that if a player is sleek, big and touch-enabled it must be perfectly usable for browsing/internet. That is just wrong. That’s what smartphones/tablets/laptops are for. The Zune HD represents the true evolution of what media players are going to become – done well. Even considering Apple – why else would tech-blogs call for the retirement of the iPod classic, and an increase in storage for the iPod Touch?
I think when it comes to the Zune HD, M$ has just targeted a different market. To my knowledge the author is one of the few people who actually uses a Nokia N-series in the US – meaning he is actually conversant with the term: “true device integration”. For those who have simple phones and don’t know about integration (yes, lots of such people still exist, and especially so in the States) – the Zune HD offers a pretty awesome option. It is affordable, looks/feels beautiful, and has a very viable ecosystem which I am now convinced is a much better alternative to Apple’s. The large global market that M$ is not offering the Zune in currently – these are also places where the majority of the users have moved to device integration. I am not sure if a limited release is a bad thing necessarily; by the time it goes global it has a lot of chinks ironed out, lots of positive karma, more integration with M$ products etc. Even in device integrated markets, the Zune HD will then have an edge.
And remember M$ is in the process of opening stores. How long do you think people are going to go without knowing all about the HD? Before M$ makes it even easier for you to do everything in your home completely integrated with M$ products?
Not long at all.
Now if only some reviews would turn up that tell me more about the media capabilities of the player – audio quality, video fidelity etc. Funny how reviews of this PMP have not talked about that all.
adobe SUCKS
Sep 12th
Posted by SEV in staying.aside
Step 1: Get notified that Adobe Flash Player must be updated on PC to overcome (one if its many) significant security flaws.
Step 2: Be shown page to download and install latest version of Flash player on computer.
Step 3: Click ‘Allow’ in Firefox.
Step 4: Sudden pop-up of ‘Adobe Download Manager’, which distinctly shows that Mc-fuckin’-Afee fuckin’ virus scan is installing for no apparent reason.
Step 5: Open Firefox to see getPlusPlus something installed as a (1) plug-in, (2) extension. Yes. Both.
Step 5.5: Find link on update page that shows that McAfee is installed by default now. NO mention of fuckin’ getPlusPlus BTW.
Step 6: Curse and wonder why Adobe Flash is used by the planet at all while uninstalling all the crapware because of upgrading Adobe fuckin’ Flash fuckin’ Player.
Step 6.5: Find entry for Adobe Download Manager (aka getPlusPlus) in ‘Add/Remove Programs’. So that I can easily install Flash. Fuckin’ Flash. A <1MB download.
Yes, Adobe fuckin’ sucks.
Don’t even get me started on Adobe fuckin’ Reader. That’s just bloated crapware – way too many ‘fucks’ needed.
Update: Thanks to Wraith, there are links to get the damn thing without cursing.
Update 2: Thanks to baddra, a solution to never use Flash again (at least on YT) as well.
